LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 314 837 3 % 



"^'mSesTol^^ } HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES j ^No''272''' 



Celebration of the Rededication 
F 158 of Congress Hall 

.8 

.C7 W7 
Copy 1 

ADDRESSES 

OF 

HON. WOODROW WILSON 

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 
AND 

HON CHAMP CLARK 

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

AT PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
OCTOBER 25, 1913 




PRESENTED BY MR. HARDWICK 
October 27, 1913.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1913 



\-\5S 
.8 




0. OF D. 

NOV 10 1913 



] 



- \ 



ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WILSON. 



[Delivereil at riiilatlelphia. Pa., on the occasion of the re(le<lication of Congress 

Hall, Oct. 2o, 1913.1 



You)' Honor, Mr. Chairman, Ladies, and Gentlemen: 

No American could stand in this place to-day and think of the cir- 
cumstances which we are come toj^ether to celebrate without being 
most profoundly stirred. There has come over me since I sat down 
here a sense of deep solemnity, because it has seemed to me that I saw 
ghosts crowding — a great assemblage of spirits, no longer visible, but 
whose influence we still feel as Ave feel the molding power of history 
itself. The men who sat in this hall, to whom we now look back with 
a touch of deep sentiment, were men of flesh and blood, face to face 
with extremely difficult problems. The population of the United 
States then Avas hardly three times the i)resent i)opulation of the city 
of Philadelphia, and yet that was a Nation as this is a Nation, and 
the men who spoke for it were setting their hands to a work which 
was to last, not only that their people might be happy, but that an 
example might be lifted up for the instruction of the rest of the 
world. 

I like to read the quaint old accounts such as Mr. Day has read to 
us this afternoon. Strangers came then to America to see what the 
young people that had sprung up here were like, and they found men 
in counsel who knew how to construct governments. They found 
men deliberating here who had none of the appearance of novices, 
none of the hesitation of men who did not know whether the work 
they were doing was going to last or not ; men who addressed them- 
selves to a problem of construction as familiarly as we attempt to 
carry out the traditions of a Government established these 137 years. 

I feel to-da}^ the com])ulsion of these men, the compulsion of ex- 
amples which were set uj) in this place. And of what do their 
examples remind us? They remind us not merely of public service 
but of public service shot through with i)rinciple and honor. They 
were not histrionic men. They did not say — 

Look upon us as upon those who shall hereafter he illustrious. 

They said : 

Look upon us who are doing the tirst free work of constitutional liherty in 
the world, and who must do it in soherness and truth, or it will not last. 

Politics, ladies and gentlemen, is made up in just about equal parts 
of comprehension and sympathy. No man ought to go into politics 
who does not comprehend the task that he is going to attack. lie 

8 



4 CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 

may comprehend it so completel}^ that it daunts him, that he doubts 
whether his own spirit is stout enough and liis own mind able enough 
to attempt its great undertakings, but unless he comprehend it he 
ought not to enter it. After he has comprehended it, there should 
come into his mind those profound impulses of sjanpathy which con- 
nect him with the rest of mankind, for politics is a business of inter- 
pretation, and no men are fit for it who do not see and seek more than 
their own advantage and interest. 

We have stumbled upon many unhappy circumstances in the hun- 
dred years that have gone by since the event that we are celebrating. 
Almost all of them have come from self-centered men, men who saw 
in their own interest the interest of the country, and who did not 
have vision enough to read it in wider terms, in the universal terms 
of equity and justice and the rights of mankind. I hear a great 
many people at Fourth of July celebrations laud the Declaration of 
Independence who in between Julys shiver at the plain language of 
our bills of rights. The Declaration of Independence was, indeed, the 
first audible breath of liberty, but the substance of liberty is written 
in such documents as the declaration of rights attached, for example, 
to the first constitution of Virginia which was a model for the simi- 
lar documents read elsewhere into our great fundamental charters. 
That document speaks in very plain terms. The men of that genera- 
tion did not hesitate to say that every people has a right to choose 
its own forms of government— not once, but as often as it pleases— 
and to accommodate those forms of government to its existing inter- 
ests and circumstances. Not only to establish but to alter is the 
fundamental principle of self-government. 

We are just as much under compulsion to study the particular cir- 
cumstances of our own day as the gentlemen were who sat in this 
hall and set us precedents, not of what to do but of how to do it. 
Liberty inheres in the circumstances of the day. Human happiness 
consists in the life which human being are leading at the time that 
they live. I can feed my memory as happily upon the circumstances 
of the revolutionary and constitutional period as you can, but I can 
not feed all my purposes with them in Washington now. Every day 
problems arise which wear some new phase and aspect, and I must 
fall back, if I would serve my conscience, upon those things which 
are fundamental rather than upon those things which are super- 
ficial, and ask myself this question. How are you going to assist in 
some small part to give the American people and, by example, the 
peoples of the world more liberty, more happiness, more substantial 
prosperity ; and how are you going to make that prosperity a common 
heritage instead of a selfish possession? I came here to-day partly in 
order to feed my own spirit. I did not come in compliment. When 
1 was asked to come I kncAv immediately upon the utterance of the 
invitation that I had to come, that to be absent would be as if I 
refused to drink once more at the original fountains of inspiration 
for our own Government. 

The men of the day which we now celebrate had a very great 
advantage over us, ladies and gentlemen, in this one particular: Life 
was simple in America then. All men shared the same circumstances 
in almost equal degree. We think of Washington, for example, as 
an aristocrat, as a nuin separated by training, separated by family 



CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 5 

and neighborliood tradition, from the ordinary people of the rank 
aTid file of the ooiiiitrv. Have von fori'otten the personal history of 
George Washin<>ton? Do you not know tliat he strufTirled as poor 
boys now strug<:le for a niea<rer and imperfect education; that he 
worked at his surveyor's tasks in the lonely forests; that he Icnew all 
the rou<rhness. all the hardships, all the adventure, all the variety 
of the common life of that day: and that if he stood a little stiffly 
in this place, if he looked a little akmf, it was because life had dealt 
hai'dly with him? All his sinews had been stiffened by the rough 
work of making America. He was a man of the people, whose touch 
had been with them since the day he saw the light first in the old 
Dominion of Virginia. And the men who came after him, men, 
some of whom had drunk deep at the sources of philosophy and of 
study, were, nevertheless, also men Avho on this side of the water 
knew no complicated life but the simple life of primitive neighbor- 
hoods. Our task is very much more difficult. That sympathy which 
alone interprets public duty is more difficult for a public man to 
ac(juire noAv than it Avas then, because Ave live in the midst of circum- 
stances and conditions infinitely complex. 

Xo man can boast that he understands America. No man can boast 
that he has lived the life of America, as almost every man Avho sat 
in this hall in those days could boast. Xo man can pretend that 
except by common counsel he can gather into his consciousness what 
the varied life of this people is. The duty that we have to keejD open 
eyes and open hearts and accessible understandings is a very much 
more difficult duty to perform than it was in their day. Yet how 
much more important that it should be performed, for fear we make 
infinite and irreparable blunders. The city of Washington is in 
some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to foi-get what the 
rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate 
circumstance that almost all the windoAvs of the White House and its 
offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the 
Potomac and then out into Virginia and on to the heavens themselves, 
and that as I sit there I can constantly forget AVashington and re- 
member the United States. Xot that I would intimate that all of 
the United States lies south of AVashington, but there is a serious 
thing back of my thought. If you think too much about being 
reelected, it is very difficult to be Avorth reelecting. You are so apt 
to forget that the comi)arati\ely small number of persons, numerous 
as they seem to be when they SAvarm, Avho come to ^A'^ashington to 
ask for things, do not constitute an important proportion of the 
population of the country, that it is constantly necessary to come 
aAvay from AA^'ashington and rencAV one's contact Avith the j^eople who 
do not sAvarm there, Avho do not ask for anything, but Avho do trust 
you Avithout their personal counsel to do your duty. Unless a man 
gets these contacts he groAvs Aveaker and Aveaker. He needs them as 
Hei-cules needed the touch of mother earth. If you lift him up 
too high or he lifts himself too high, he loses the contacr and therefore 
loses the inspirati(m. 

I love to think of those plain men, hoAvever far from plain their 
dress sometimes Avas, Avho assembled in this hall. One is startled to 
think of the variety of costume and color Avhich Avonld now occur if 
Ave Avere let loose upon the fashions of that age. Men's lack of taste 



D CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 

is largely concealed now by the limitations of fashion. Yet these 
men, who sometimes dressed like the peacock, were, nevertheless, of 
the ordinary flight of their time. They were birds of a feather ; they 
were birds come from a very simple breeding ; they were much in the 
open heaven. They were beginning, when there was so little to dis- 
tract their attention, to show that they could live upon fundamental 
principles of government. We talk those principles, bnt we have not 
time to absorb them. We have not time to let them into our blood, 
and thence have them translated into the plain mandates of action. 
The very smallness of this room, the very simplicity of it all, all 
the suggestions which come from its restoration, are reassuring 
things — things which it becomes a man to realize. Therefore my 
theme here to-day, my only thought, is a very simple one. Do 
not let us go back to the annals of those sessions of Congress to 
find out what to do, because we live in another age and the circum- 
stances are absolutely different; but let us be men of that kind; let 
us feel at every turn the compulsions of principle and of honor 
which thy felt; let us free our vision from temporary circumstances 
and look abroad at the horizon and take into our lungs the great 
air of freedom which has blown through this country and stolen 
across the seas and blessed people everywhere; and, looking east 
and west and north and south, let us remind ourselves that we are 
the custodians, in some degree, of the principles which have made 
men free and governments just. 



ADDRESS OF HON. CHAMP CLARK. 



[Delivered at Philadelphia, Pa., Saturday, Oct. 25, 1913.] 



In the history of America there are certain gi*eat epochal events 
which we can all most heartily and enthusiastically celebrate. 
Among these are the discovery of the New World; the first white 
settlement at Jamestown; the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth 
Rock; Patrick Henry's great lyric speech in the Virginia House of 
Burgesses, which precipitated the Kevolution and which still stirs 
the heart like strains of martial music; the skirmish at Lexington, 
where the embattled farmers fired the shot heard around the world; 
the Declaration of Independence; the surrender of Lord Cornwallis 
at Yorktown; the adoption of the Constitution; and the purchase of 
the Louisiana Territory, which made us a world power. 

Philadelphia was the scene of two of these vastly important and 
far-reaching transactions — the promulgatiou of the Declaration and 
the making of the Constitution. The former published our theory 
of go\ ernment ; the latter set forth the plan to put that theory into 
eifect. The Declaration is the most splendid State paper in all the 
hoary registers of time; the Constituticm ha§ been pronounced the 
greatest single emanation of the human mind. The majestic sweep 
of the Declaration helped us secure our liberty. A man of sensibility 
can not read it, even at this late day, without his blood flowing faster. 
For 137 years it has been a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire 
by night to people everywhere struggling for the freedom to which 
all men are entitled. 

If there were saints in the political calendar as there are in the 
religious and if i)articular days were assigned to particular saints, 
the Fourth of July would be universally called Saint Jetferson's 
Day. The twin basic ideas. ''All men are created equal " and 
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the 
governed." which the fathers enunciated that day in this goodly city 
have Avorked like the leaven described in the Bible until the civilized 
world has accepted our political philosoi)hy in whole or in part. 
Like Tennyson's brook, they will go on forever until men everywhere 
are free. Our Declaration of Independence is the Magiui Charta of 
human libertv and has revolutionized the world. 

If it be true that imitation is the sincerest flattery, we iiave ample 
cause for self-congratulation, for our Constitution has become both 
the fashion and the pattern amcmg nations. The highest compli- 
ment ever paid the fathers of the Republic was when Bismarck built 
the new German Empire upon the model of our dual government. 

7 



8 CELEBEATIOlsr OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 

Be it ours to preserve, strengthen, and perpetuate our free insti- 
tutions, thereby transmitting to our descendants the richest herit- 
age ever possessed by the children of men. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the words I have just spoken constitute the 
written speech which I gaA'e out in advance to the newspapers be- 
cause they wanted it. Now I am going to say a few things perti- 
nent to the occasion for my own satisfaction. 

From tlie smaHest beginning we have risen to a commanding 
position. 

Truly does Emerson say : 

We live in n new and exceptional asje. America is another word for oppor- 
tunity. Our entire history appears like a last effort of Divine Providence in 
behalf of the human I'ace. 

Those words of the great Concord philosopher Avere fitly spoken 
and are like apples of gold in pictures of silver. 

Our growth in every respect has been, indeed, phenomenal. 

In ISOO we had 5,308,483 people. In 1910 our population was 
91,972,266 in continental America alone, exclusive of Alaska, Hawaii, 
Guam, Porto Eico, the Philippines, and the Canal Zone- If our 
population increases at that rate for the next 110 vears, in 2010 it will 
number 2,000,000,000 souls— 500,000,000 more than are supposed to 
be on earth to-day. It makes one think of Andrew Carnegie's gor- 
geous vision of " the United States of the World." Not long since 
Mr. Secretary of Agriculture James AVilson declared in a public 
address that if the Mississippi Valley were cultivated for all it is 
worth on the average one acre would support one human being, which 
would give us 1,250,000,000 citizens betwixt the top of the Alle- 
ghenies and the crest of the Rockies. 

When Mr. Speaker Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg called the 
House of the First Congress to order he presided over a House com- 
posed of 56 Members. Now I preside over a House composed of 435 
Members, to say nothing of two Territorial Delegates and three Resi- 
dent Commissioners from Porto Rico and the Philippines. In the 
beginning the ratio for a Representative in Congress was 33,000; 
now it is 212,500. With the first ratio and our present population 
the House of Representatives would consist of 2,787 Representatives. 

In 113 vears our total wealth multiplied 125 fold and is now rated 
by statisticians at the enormous sum of $140,000,000,000, which, if 
equally distributed, would give $1,312 to every man, woman, and 
child between the two oceans. But there's the rub, for while a few are 
rich beyond the dream of avarice, many have not the wherewithal to 
feed and clothe themselves. I am fain to believe that the crowning 
glory of the philosophy, statecraft, humanitarianism, and religion of 
the twentieth century will be to devise a scheme whereby every man, 
and every Avoman, too, shall enjoy the usufruct of his own labor and 
to prevent one greedy soul from monopolizing the toil and sAveat and 
lives of thousands. The signs of the times indicate that that dream 
is not too fantastic for entertainment. That glad era began Avhen 
N. O. Nelson, of St. Louis, originated the plan of sharing profits Avith 
his employees. I humbly and reverently thank God this day that he 
is a Missourian. Some of the great manufacturing concerns, rail- 
roads, and insurance companies are establishing pension systems for 
their em])loyees disabled by sickness, accident, or old age, which put 
to blush the liberal pension system of the Federal GoA^ernment for 



CELEBRATION OF THE REDEDICATION OF CONGRESS HALL. 9 

the soldiers of our various Avars. I say blessed he the name of the 
man forever, without reofard to ])olitics or relitjion, Avho establishes 
abidino; peace between labor and capital, which should be friends and 
not enemies. 

Should our wealth increase for the next W.) vears at the rate of the 
hist li:}, in the year 'lO'H) it will amount to $17.r)0(),()00.()00.()()(). a sum 
so stui)en(l()us as to be incompi'ehensible by the mathematical powers 
of the human mind. 

In 1800 our territory was eireumscribed i)v the Atlantic on the 
east, the Mississippi on the west, the Great Lakes on the north, and 
the Floridas on the south. It did not even touch the Gulf of Mexico. 
Now it extends from the sunrise side of Porto Rico in the east to the 
Lord only knows where in the west. 

In ISOO Ave Avere a fourth-rate power, a feeble folk of little value in 
the Avorld's calculations and i)lans. Now Ave are in the front rank, 
and there is not an emperor, czar, kino-, ])rince, jiotentate, or premier 
Avho does not lie aAvake of niirhts tryino- to discover Avhat Ave Avill do 
next. The President of the T^nited States has more real power than 
any ruler on eai'th, the reason beinir that so soon as any man is 
elected President he is the President of all Americans of Avhatever 
pel suasion, relifjious or political. 

In ISOO churches Avere like angels' visits, few and far betAveen. The 
advent of the jireacher into a community was the event of the season, 
sometimes of the year. Noav the aA'era.sc citizen lives within less than 
4 miles of a i)lace of Avorship and ])reachei's aiul jii-iests are as ))lenti- 
ful as candidates in a Republican i^rimary in Philadel])liia. These 
facts are not to be desijised even by statesmen, for the Avisest man that 
ever liA'ed said: "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a 
reproach to any ])eople." 

The majority of the men aa'Iio fought in the Revolutionary War 
could not read and Avrite. According to the last census less than 8 
per cent of our Avhite people Avere classed as illiterate. 

When (ieorge Washington was first sworn in as President there 
Avere about a dozen colleges in the United States, every one of them 
in imminent danger of dying of Avhat the doctors call anemia — that 
is, poverty of the blood. Now a million ambitious boys and girls are 
preparing themselves for the important and onerous duties of Amer- 
ican citizenship at 500 universities and colleges, not to^mention high- 
class academies. I myself have lectured to one audience composed 
entirely of the teachers and students of one university which num- 
bered more persons than did the army with which Sam Houston 
established the lil)ertv of 'J'e.xas on the red field 'of San Jacinto. 

It is said to have been the wish dearest to the heart of Henry IV, 
the greatest of the Bourbon Kings, that France might become so 
prosperous that every Frenchman might have a fowl iii the pot for 
his Sunday dinner, Avhich does not seem much of a boon to us meat 
eaters in this rich and favored land. If I had one prayer for the 
American Republic Avhich I kncAv Avonld be ansAvered, it Avould be 
that e\ery American citizen should be sufliciently educated to read 
his ballot intelligently on election day and sufficiently courageous to 
cast it as becomes an American freeuuin. 

The small but goodly compain* of heroes and statesmen who once 
sat in this Hall and legislated for the nascent Republic wrought: 



10 CELEBEATION OF THE REDEDICATION OP CONGRESS HALL. 

wisely and patriotically in the cause of human freedom. We also 
of this day who are intrusted with power — the President and his 
administration and both Houses of Congress — work energetically, 
patriotically, and wisely, I hope, for the public weal. 

The greatest achievement to our credit is that we have taught all 
the peoples of the earth that men can govern themselves — a glorious 
fact of which we may well be proud. 

I have no patience with the pessimists and muckrakers who are for- 
ever predicting the downfall of the Republic and the return of chaos. 
It surely must be that if 3,000,000 backwoodsmen in the dawn of civ- 
ilization on this continent possessed the wisdom, skill, courage, forti- 
tude, patriotism, and self-abnegation to achieve liberty, we ninety- 
odd millions of their descendants, the very flower of the human race, 
with a continent for our home and the resources of a continent to 
command, possess the wisdom, skill, courage, fortitude, patriotism,^ 
and self-abnegation to preserve our free institutions for ourselves and 
our posterity. 

When I look into the faces of my children my heart swells with 
ineffable pride to think that they are citizens of this mighty Repub- 
lic, one and indivisible, built not for a day but for all time, and des- 
tined under God to be the dominating influence through all the cen- 
turies yet to be. 

o 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



014 314 837 3 



